starting a hare

In yesterday's inaugural column, Bill Kristol shared with the readers of the Times his wise political insight that Bloomberg would feel he had to run if Obama was the candidate (in other things Kristol got wrong news, they've fixed the misattribution of the Michael Medved quote online).

In today's papers, the Times and the Wall Street Journal assure us that Bloomberg won't consider a third party run as long as Obama is the candidate (although, Sam Nunn hints, Obama would have to let the wise men pick his cabinet). Mr. Boren* suggests in the WSJ story that he'll be forced to engineer a third party challenge if everyone doesn't make him happy, but in the Times story all his marquee names pledge to support the candidate of their party.

So the second day story is that a rich guy and a bunch of center-right politicians (redundant, that) held a meeting - with cheesecake - and decided that more people should listen to them, but concluded that they really weren't going to do anything about it.

I'm personally deeply askeered and plan to prayerfully consult the wishes of this pivotal group before making any voting decisions.

In other news:

I gotta go with the conventional wisdom (that would be Ann Althouse, right?) on this one - Hillary's crying is clearly a calculated ploy to make her look manly and presidential

TBogg has the further adventures of wifebeating overaged frat boy former (damn, I love writing that) congressman John Sweeney of Miami vote riot fame, who seems to be handling the downturn of his fortunes with his usual charm and grace. Sadly, his ability to keep this sort of thing out of the papers is not what it once was

annals of a great love lost: via Roy, it seems as if there's going to be no more public foreplay in Soho restaurants for reactionary political tourettes sufferer Ann Coulter and her unperfected jewish liberal gay-friendly pro-choice New York Democrat gentleman friend Andrew Stein. Ms. Coulter is apparently throwing herself into her work. You may recall her recent column explaining that Huckabee wasn't morally fit to be the Republican nominee because he's not as rigidly doctrinaire an inerrantist evangelical Christian as she is

*Mr. Boren, who came by his political career the old-fashioned way (by inheriting it from his politician father) has a son in the House whose position might not be injured by having a kingmaker in the family

we interrupt your current dominant narrative

to point out that the hugely out-spent John Edwards is the only candidate actually surging in the Democratic primary in national polls.

Please return to your discussion of the status of the inevitability of one of the other two frontrunners already in progress

update: and now no-one's even inevitable any more. See?